BACK TO BASICS: What is a CMS and Do You Need One?

BACK TO BASICS: What is a CMS and Do You Need One?

A Content Management System or CMS is a software product that
companies use to manage the content of their Web sites. Some content
management systems are complicated and quite expensive; others can be
simple and quite reasonable. "Broadly speaking, Content Management
describes a process that allows people to more easily create and update
content, especially on their Web sites (Web Content Management)." Does
your company need a CMS? Let's explore your options.

The first step in deciding whether or not you need a CMS is to take a
look at the size of your site, and how often you update it. Generally
speaking, if you have a small and static site you probably don't need a
CMS. However, if your site is composed of many content-rich pages and
sections that change on a daily, weekly or bi-weekly basis, you might
want to look into using a content management system to help you manage
them.

One site that I am intimately familiar with that uses a CMS is Customs and Border Protection.
CBP began using a content management system about seven years ago. I
worked there at the time and we had the huge task of migrating over
7,000 pages of static content to the CMS. It was a huge undertaking and
took us over a year to get the project finished. However, it was worth
it. The CBP site can change on a daily basis so the task of keeping the
pages up to date was made infinitely easier with the use of a CMS.

One of the first things we did before starting the content migration
was to hire an information architect. She went through the whole site
and conducted interviews with all the content owners to make sure that
the content was up to date and necessary for the site. The next step we
took was to make sure that we had a programmer on staff who was able to
edit the backend (programming side) of the content management system we
chose. That may not be necessary for your site but it's something to
keep in mind. After that, we had to make sure that our designer and Web
developers were trained on how to use the CMS. Once this was completed,
we were able to start moving the content. This took a long time but was
worth the effort when complete.

"A CMS is right and the features are real when your organization is
using it every day. A CMS is only 20% purchased software and hardware.
It is 80% the process of people using the tools to implement a content
management strategy." CMS Review.
Using the right content management system can help you manage your
content and reach your search engine optimization goals. But you won't
know if a CMS is right for you and which one to purchase until you take
the time to do the research.

Which CMS Will Work For Your Site

Which CMS Will Work For Your Site

Once you've made the decision to manage your content with a CMS, it's
time to look at several factors that will help you narrow down your
choices to the right one for you.

You'll need to consider the number of hands you have working on your
Web site. Most content management systems have a versioning system built
into them. This means that a history of all the changes made to a page
is kept. That way, if something is changed that shouldn't have been or
there a mistake has been made, the system will allow you to "roll back"
to a previous version of the page. The versioning system also keeps
track of who made the changes thereby giving you a record of who is
updating the pages. Keeping track of who made changes and when, can be
helpful for monitoring your site and making sure that mistakes don't
happen or can be corrected quickly when they do. If you do have many
people working on your site, it may be a good idea to use a content
management system to help you monitor who is making changes and when. If
you don't have many content writers, then you may not need this
functionality.

Another factor to take into account is how complicated your site
layout is and how different or similar your pages are. If your site's
pages all use a similar layout then a CMS can easily be implemented. If
not, it can get complicated because you'll have to create many templates
when setting it up. You also have to decide if the CMS will fit your
needs right out of the box or if you are going to have to monkey with it
to make it work the way you want. Some systems allow you to do this
easily, others, not so much. If you have programmers on staff who can
help you edit the software, this may be an option for you.

When comparing potential solutions, look at whether or not the CMS
you're looking at will be search engine optimization-friendly. Your CMS
should allow you to easily optimize your site. You have to make sure
that the system has all the areas in your templates that you need in
order to add Meta tags and that it is easy to modify them. This may be a
problem if you use the same templates for all of your pages. You need
to make sure that the pages that are used to enter the content into have
Title, Description and Keyword tags in them and that the person who is
entering your content into the pages adds the correct content to all
those tags.

A great site to look at for additional information on content management systems is CMS Review and their Best Practices in Content Management.
They have broken down what they consider to be best practices into a
graphic that accurately shows the steps that should be taken in
organizing your content management set up.

The whole practice may seem overwhelming and confusing based on the
graphic, but it doesn't have to be. You just have to invest the time to
accurately and effectively research the needs of your site and
determine what you want it to accomplish.

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